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Author: Rick Moen
Date:  
To: dng
Subject: Re: [DNG] TALOS 2 - The Libre Owner Controlled POWER9 Workstation/Server
Quoting Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult (enrico.weigelt@???):

> >Have you written this up, somewhere?
>
> yet incomplete and hackish (due lack of time)
>
> https://github.com/orgs/Librezilla/


Thank you for working on that. I haven't taken the time to find the
crux of your objection to the upstream code, though.


> >>MSF has already made it perfectly clear they'll never accept any patches
> >>for that and continue their path (already threatened me personally)
> >
> >And have you written up the details of this?
>
> Most of it should still be in their mail archives - and I could publish
> the personal mails when applicable.


(Which archives, BTW?)

I didn't mean to suggest that I disbelieved you, only that oddly vague
claims of 'threats' have a generally wretched history on the Internet.
For starters, the author's notion of what qualifies as threatening and
the reader's, and what rises to the level of being worthy of notice,
tend to differ.

This situation is worsened by many Internet denizens' (and many
businesses') assumption that talk is cheap on the Internet, that they
can get away with darkly hinting at harm of various sorts
(semi-threatened litigation for business torts and libel, or alleged
trademark violation, being the most common) without consequence.

In my experience, the only way to restore accountability is to put the
facts out in public without editorial commentary, including names and
full texts. This has been my own policy: E.g., when Prof. Daniel J.
Bernstein semi-threatened litigation because I dared to maintain a FAQ
saying why I preferred not to use his software, I politely referred him
to my attorney and then put the correspondence up on the Web for public
amusement.[1] Later, when an officer of a LUG in Davis, California sent me
an (it was later claimed) unauthorised lawsuit threat letter because I
documented on my Web site abusive conduct by the then-listadmin, I
published it plus my response letter.[2] And when one of my fellow Board
members of my local sysadmin guild, BayLISA, bizarrely and in error
claimed _I'd_ threatened litigation against BayLISA (my _own_
organisation), I published all of that, too.[3] Last, when the operator
of standalone newsgroup threatened me with copyright litigation for
Web-archiving public postings from the newsgroup, I Web-published that
as an addition to my Web archive.[4]

In each case, the supposed legal threat was obvious bullshit except of
the type people feel free to hurl around because they might get their
way if the recipient is timid and/or stupid, _and_ because they see no
downside to trying. As I happen to have a reasonably high PageRanked
Web site, as it turns out, there _is_ a downside to trying this dumb
Internet trick on me -- and I don't take lawsuits lightly, having lived
through my mother's suit against a Fortune 50 corporation (Boeing) over
the wrongful death of my father, Pan Am Captain Arthur Moen. Even
though we won, it was an ordeal, so I do not regard bogus legal threats
as a matter to take lightly, but rather one to punish with sunlight.

If the 'threat' you speak of was substantive _and unmerited_, then IMO
you should do likewise.

But you haven't said what this was, and, FWIW, I did spend a few minutes
looking for it.


[1] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/dan-brandishing-legal-threats
[2] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info/lugod.html
[3] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/litigious2.html
[4] http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/linux-info2/astcomm.html